Irresponsible, Immature Pirates
On Saturday night, Chris and I were in our living room together, looking at our finances. The kids were asleep after a long day and fun movie night, and the two of us were going over our money and plans for our trip to Italy this summer for our tenth wedding anniversary.
Have I told you we are going to Italy? We are! I am so excited! We have been planning and saving for almost two years now. We even opened a special savings account at a different bank from where our other accounts are, just so that we wouldn’t mess with that money – even in the case of an emergency. We have been saving for a long time, and are just now beginning to pull money out of the account to book our trip. So far, we have our hotels and have paid for several little day trips that we will be making.
We are going to stay in Rome for a few days, with a day trip to Naples and Pompeii (which has been on my bucket list since I first learned about it in a middle school history class). Then, we are traveling to Florence for a few days, and finally on to Venice. I’ve been to Venice before, but everywhere else will be new for both Chris and me, and we are excited to spend a few weeks exploring somewhere new together.
But I digress…
We were sitting on our couch Saturday night looking over a few things for our trip when I decided for some reason to look at my paycheck stub online. I am embarrassed to admit the rest of this story, but luckily for you imaginary friends, embarrassment never lasts long for me, so I’m going to share. Just please don’t judge us. I swear we are responsible adults.
So, I’m looking at my paystub for the first time in, like, years, and I notice that there is a withholding in my pay that seemed strange. It said, “Deferment Savings to _____ Bank.”
Huh. That’s odd because I don’t have an account with the bank that was listed.
But the longer I sat there thinking about it, the more I remembered. I DID have an account with them! I set it up when I was first hired by my school system FIVE YEARS AGO. Chris and I just kind of sat there for a minute. Surely, SURELY, we did not have a secret account somewhere with money in it that we didn’t even know about. SURELY we were not THOSE people with so much money that we LOST TRACK OF IT.
I remember one year working at Yale, a faculty member came in to see me because he had not received a paycheck for over a year. When I looked into it, there was indeed a problem with his account and his $80,000 PAYCHECK had not been paid in over a year!!!!!! I remember coming home and laughing with Chris because who could lose track of $80,000?!?!?!?!
Now, I knew there would be no where CLOSE to $80,000 in this account. But the fact that we had an entire account somewhere that we didn’t know about made me feel both embarrassingly stupid and, yet, AWWWWWWWWWESOME at the same time.
I hunted through some old paperwork in our office and eventually found an account number, so I tried logging into the banking system, but, obviously, I had never set up an online account. So, I ended up calling the bank at midnight on Saturday. Let me tell you, that was an embarrassing phone call.
“Hi, I’m trying to locate an account that I have had for five years, but have never known about until tonight.”
Judgment seeped through that call center station in India.
Finally, they got me access into my account. Turns out, we’ve been saving like CHAMPS! We had almost as much money in that account as we have been saving on our own for Italy over the past two years! Chris and I laughed and danced and jumped for joy for about an hour in our living room because WHO FINDS A RANDOM SAVINGS ACCOUNT AFTER FIVE YEARS?!?!
We are now in that uncomfortable position of acting like adults and putting that money into our real, actual savings accounts for a rainy day or acting like teenagers and DOUBLING OUR FUNDS FOR ITALY! WHOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO!!!! Thankfully, I’m married to a responsible person, and I’m pretty sure we are just going to keep this little nest egg hidden away and let it keep growing over time. Blah.
Adulting is so overrated.
But, no matter how adultish you are, finding a hidden savings account brings joy like a five-year-old who finds buried treasure in their backyard! ARRRRRRGGGGG, Mateys!
14 Comments
krista
That is AWESOME!!!!!!!
Renee
Ummm…why doesn’t this kind of thing happen to me?!
Nancy
You should definitely do something over the top in Italy that was previously out of your budget using a portion of this money! Something like a presidential suite, flying first class, hiring a private car for a tour, etc! You can have the best of both worlds – save for a rainy day and now be able to do something crazy you hadn’t planned on doing. Looking forward to the recaps! Have the best time!
vdragon
We went to Pompeii about 3 years ago and it was on my bucket list. I would recommend finding a tour guide if at all possible. It’s huge ( a while city) imagine touring a college campus full of buildings. There is no signage though, so you don’t know what you are looking at or much of the history of a building. We were also approached by some random dude who may or may not have worked there and he took us behind side of the roped areas and showed us some of the casts of bodies. Then asked for money, still the best 20 euros we spent. Also, Herculaneum is nearby, a couple train stops and better preserved and more condensed than Pompeii. Check out Wikipedia travel for Good info. Unfortunately, Naples is terrible.
Meggie
That’s awesome!! Congratulations! We share an anniversary by the way… June 4, 2005. =) We won’t be doing a big trip this year since we’re renting a home while trying to sell a home while trying to find a new home. Ha! Plus my littlest is only 13 months old and I just can’t bring myself to go far away for multiple days with him so little. But I’m so happy for y’all! And jealous! Ha! Can’t wait to read about the adventures of your trip!!
Lee Ann
So awesome about the hidden savings account! I say split it: half for the trip; half to some “responsible adult savings,” like a Roth IRA or college fund for the kiddos. But … as far as Italy … give yourself LOTS of time in Pompeii. We only spent 3 hours there and it was not nearly long enough to see it all. Earlier in the day, we had hiked to the top of Mt. Vesuvius, which made the entire scenario even more realistic. One huge bit of advice: Please, please make sure to hike the Path of the Gods (on the Amalfi Coast). Best if you hire a local guide to take you on this one. That day hike made my entire trip to Italy worth it! Have fun!
Sarah H.
Awesome!! All wonderful news!! We’re flying to FL and cruising to the Bahamas for our 10th anniversary. Paid for with credit card points!
Becky
LOVE this!!! Maybe you could take a teeeeny bit of your treasure for souvenirs? 😀 <3
Maren
I don’t call that immature irresponsible adulting…I call that ADULTING LIKE A BOSS!!
I mean, only someone who can adult to that level has a super secret savings account that has oodles of money in it!!
And I totally agree with Nancy and think you should do one over the top thing on your anniversary trip…fly first class or book the presidential suite…something to reward your ADULTING LIKE A BOSS-ness.
Amanda H
Adulting like a boss may have just become my new favorite phrase.
Liz McC.
We did a trip like that to Italy in 2004 where we got engaged at the amphitheater in Verona. Best advice I can give you- bring sunscreen and BUG SPRAY! The mosquitoes are fierce and left me with welts for days. Enjoy yourself and good job being responsible- but maybe bring a little bit more spending money anyway? 🙂
Susan R
That is Awesome! We went to Italy last year an Loved it! Florance was my favorite!
Tabs
You should definitely fly first class now! Maybe just one way?? Come one Chris, let her do something fun with a little bit of it! 🙂
Nancy
Ha ha! My mother’s wife’s hobby is looking through the paper for those notices banks put in when they are trying to find account owners of old bank accounts. One time, she saw my great-uncle’s name! He had put $25 into an account decades ago and it turned out to have like, a bajillion dollars in it. (Okay, not a bajillion, but a lot!!) Enjoy your trip! We went to Italy for our honeymoon and my husband mentioned he’d like to go back for our tenth anniversary…he wants to go with the kids, I vote no. LOL.